Scardino has been busy with deal talks to improve the company's bottom line. Pearson has purchased the online university outfit, Ecollege, for $538 million, and has been shopping around Groupe Les Echos, which includes France's major business daily, Les Echos. LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate, at press time was in talks to acquire the Paris-based paper. The talks come as investors have been pressuring Scardino to dump the newspaper business—its business daily, the Financial Times, only started earning profits in the past two years—and focus Pearson on its more successful textbook publishing arm, which includes Penguin books. Pearson says it is talking to a number of potential partners about new ways to showcase the newspaper's reporting. "We're talking to all sorts of people about different distribution channels," says Scardino. Born in Arizona, Scardino was raised in Texas. She was a desk editor at the Associated Press when she met her husband, then a cub reporter. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Scardino in 2002.—Erika Brown

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Published sources include the women's official biographies, Factiva, International Who's Who of 2006, Marquis Who's Who, World Almanac of Famous People, Palgrave Who's Who 2006, the Congressional Yellow Book, the Judicial Yellow Book, Europa World Year Book, Hoover's Online, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, World Economic Forum, the World Book Encyclopedia. Rankings generated by combining various financial figures with other media and biography metrics; global media mentions from Factiva.